tricks out of our sleeves
by verybrave
Summary: [2012] "That's why they don't get along, the cook and Zeff, the cook and himself, because they occupy the same small places meant only for one." A journey for two. Set after Water 7, right before entering the Florian Triangle. Zoro/Sanji(ish).
1. Chapter 1

"Very well," the old man says. "The two of you, together."

A feeling like being wrapped in a heavy blanket, the sun in the sky dimming like a candle flame cut off from air. The Thousand Sunny drops away from them, but there's no falling sensation, just weightlessness and disorientation, everything muffled.

Darkness closing in on them like the jaws of a giant seaking. How does that go? That's right.

_Chomp._

.

.

"What the fuck is that _noise_?"

It's the cook's voice. Zoro opens his eyes and blinks, edges of black ebbing from his vision. He's on his back, looking up at a translucent canopy of trees, a latticework of blue sky showing through the leaves. He goes through a mental checklist: katana at his side, all limbs accounted for, everything functional, no pain, no blood. Looking good so far, although his ears are ringing a little bit. It's loud here, all right, but it's a familiar sound—the persistent, dissonant screech of cicada song.

How'd they get here? He can't remember. He can hear the cook getting to his feet somewhere off to his left. He lays there a few extra moments, feeling lazy, but then the cook is looming over him and nudging his side none too gently with the toe of his shoe.

"Wakey wakey, marimo," the cook quips. "Almost didn't see you there. You blend right in with all this green."

"Asshole." He bats away the offending foot with a growl and sits up. "Where's everyone else?"

"Search me. Climb a tree and look around some, would you?"

"Why don't you do it?"

The cook ignores him, already walking away to poke around at their immediate surroundings, which consist of a lot of undergrowth and gnarled roots. Zoro stands reluctantly and grumbles something about bossy, insufferable, useless idiots. But he chooses a tree anyway, one with good footholds and handholds for climbing, and starts his way up. He pulls himself up onto the topmost bough, startling a wide-eyed squirrel that scurries away with a squeak. The cicadas are even louder among the branches.

"Well?" comes the cook's voice from below. "See anything?"

He cuts away a swath of branches and leaves obscuring his view and is treated to the sight of more treetops. He swings himself over to the other side and does the same. More trees, no surprise there.

"Nothing!" he shouts down.

"What do you mean 'nothing'?!"

"What part of 'nothing' are you not understanding, cook?"

There's a loud _thump_ and the bough he's standing on starts to wobble, the sound of cicadas wavering for a moment before picking up again with a renewed frenzy. He puts a hand against the trunk to steady himself. "What the hell did you do that for, jackass!"

"Keep looking until you find something or I'll kick this tree so hard you'll come crashing down with it!"

"I'm telling you there's nothing but more forest! Come up and see for yourself if you don't believe me!"

"I'm not a fucking land monkey like you! Would it kill you to be useful for once? We have to find Nami-san and the others!"

Zoro grits his teeth, scans the leafy green distance a second time. He doesn't need the cook to tell him that finding the crew is first priority. He_knows_ that, but that doesn't change the fact that there is literally nothing around for miles except trees and more—

He squints, shielding his eyes from the sun. Something in his line of sight seems to shimmer and shift. Are the trees moving?

Another impatient _thump_ and this time he almost does fall over when the bough bounces beneath his feet. "Quit it before I cut your legs off!" he hollers. "I think I see something over there!"

"Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?"Another insistent _thump_ and Zoro contemplates sawing off the adjacent bough and dropping it on the cook's head.

He decides against it, but just barely. He hops down from bough to bough until he lands on the soft floor of the forest. The cook is waiting and staring at him with an expression of scarcely concealed contempt. He makes an irritated gesture with his hand, as if to demand _well, asshole_? Zoro shoves him aside and starts walking in the direction he is one-hundred-percent positive is the right one.

"Now what have we learned? If you're going that way..." The cook grabs the back of his shirt, abruptly halting his progress. There's a look on the cook's face like sincere contemplation but Zoro knows he's just being facetious. "Then that means we should go the opposite direction. This way."

"Hey!"

.

.

The sun is just starting to set, making it all the easier to trip over tree roots and loose, inconveniently-placed rocks. The cook is absolutely livid, which means veins are popping in his temple and his eye is developing a tic. He's even stopped yelling for Nami and Robin at every second. Now the only sounds accompanying them are their own footsteps and the ubiquitous cicadas.

"I can't believe this. Your incompetence is beyond mortal reasoning."

"_My_ incompetence?! I'm just following _you_, shitcook!"

"Doesn't matter. It's always your fault. You're screwing us over just by being you."

"Should have gone my way to begin with."

"Then we would have been even more lost."

"I never get lost."

"You—YOU'RE ALWAYS LOST, YOU IDIOT. HOPELESSLY, PATHETICALLY, IRREVERSIBLY LOST."

"IS IT MY FAULT THAT THEY KEEP MOVING THINGS AROUND WHEREVER WE GO," he snarls indignantly.

"YOUR HEAD REALLY IS JUST A MOSS COVERED ROCK, ISN'T IT."

"SAY THAT AGAIN, DARTBROW. I DARE YOU."

"MOSS. COVERED. _ROCK_!"

"THAT'S IT—"

He doesn't even bother unsheathing any of his katana. His patience is long gone and he wants the satisfying impact of his fist colliding against the cook's infuriating face. The cook meets him head on, the both of them blowing off all the frustration and nagging worry that's been building up since they woke. All this nervous energy, useless if you can't do anything with it but trudge through an endless forest with only each other for company. He lands a few hits and cook lands a few, hard enough to hurt but not enough to break, until he finally manages to grab hold of one of the cook's legs and send him crashing into the nearest tree.

Or, at least, that's what he meant to do.

He rubs his eyes and blinks. There's no one there. Which means he had _definitely_ seen the cook vanish into the tree. Well. This is inconvenient. When he said he was going to punch the cook into next week, he didn't mean _literally_.

"Uh, cook?" he ventures. "You alive?"

"What the fuck," comes a voice from the other side of the tree, "just happened."

Zoro quickly walks around to see the cook patting himself down, confused but not exactly alarmed.

"You went through the tree."

"Yes."

"Like, _through_ it."

"I am aware of that, Zoro!"

Zoro huffs and crosses his arms, annoyed but grudgingly relieved. "Well, that's that, then."

"What do you mean 'that's that'? People don't just go through perfectly solid objects!"

"You do. You just did."

"I—" The cook takes a deep breath, eyebrow twitching. "Zoro, come here."

"Why?" he asks suspiciously.

"I want to test something."

"You're not kicking me through any trees."

The cook shoots him a glare. "Fine." He walks up to the tree he had just passed through and puts a hand against the trunk—and then through the trunk. His arm sinks into it as if there were nothing there at all. He looks back at Zoro, eyebrow raised.

"You're creepy."

"Shut the fuck up and try it too, marimo."

Zoro rolls his eyes but complies. He walks over to another tree and pats its trunk. It's obviously solid beneath his palm and he can feel the roughness of the bark, but there's no resistance when he presses into it, and his hand goes through just like the cook's did.

"Same?"

"Yeah." He withdraws his hand and frowns at it, flexing his fingers. Then he draws Wadou and swings the blade in a sweeping arc. It cuts nothing.

Zoro thinks back. He was able to cut through the branches of that tree he climbed after he first woke, and the cook was able to kick it hard enough to make it shake all over. And just a little while ago, they were still stumbling over half-hidden roots and stubbing their toes and crashing into low-hanging branches. This must mean that they stepped over a line somewhere recently, crossed the border between normal and really weird ghostly shenanigans.

"A new development," he says slowly. "Which means…"

"Maybe we're finally closer to getting some fucking answers," the cook finishes.

Zoro nods, starts to take a step forward, but the cook sighs and grabs his collar, whirls him around to face the opposite direction.

"That's back the way we came. _This_ way is forward. Idiot."

.

.

They're at the edge of a large clearing, standing atop a slope leading down to a village surrounded on all sides by the woods. Everything is awash in the orange glow of the setting sun—houses and their tiled roofs and walled courtyards, the neat grid of streets, the simple wooden bridges over the river that splits the village in half. It's an idyllic scene, all of it overlaid with that perpetual, high-pitched racket that's making his head throb. What did Zoro say was making that noise? Cicadas? Some sort of bug. Figures. Fucking pests.

"Oi, Zoro… are you all right? You're looking a little greener than u—whoa!"

Zoro sits down hard on the ground and Sanji is next to him in an instant.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Zoro says, but he sounds breathless as he struggles back to his feet. "Nothing. I—" He stops and Sanji can see Zoro's eyes darting this way and that, can almost hear Zoro's brain whirring away, overheating. Zoro turns suddenly and snaps, "This way."

"What? Wait!" He jumps after Zoro, who's already starting down the slope. "I said wait! I don't know where you think you're going, but that's probably not—"

"This way," Zoro repeats, voice flat and eyes hard when he looks at Sanji, and he turns to walk away again.

Sanji stares after him for a moment, then rakes a hand through his hair. "Fine! Bastard." He follows.

They pass people on the streets, parents walking with their children, the elderly bent over their canes. Nobody so much as glances at them, not even the stray dogs lounging on the bank of the river. Sanji takes a moment to look into the water as they cross one of the wooden bridges, and he's not completely surprised when he sees that he has no reflection.

He's about to point this out to Zoro but Zoro is already two streets ahead of him. He catches up to Zoro outside the gate to a large, walled estate. He can just make out the tops of tiled roofs over the high walls and he can hear the synchronized voices of young children. There's a sign hanging besides the gate in a language he can't read. Before he can ask Zoro just where the hell they're going, Zoro sets off again without a word, this time at a run.

"Fucking marimo swordsman," he mutters under his breath as he takes off after the idiot, trying to convince himself that he's not at all worried.

Soon they're at the outskirts of the village, heading towards another clearing just beyond a threadleaf maple tree with winding branches like veins. He catches a glimpse of their destination up ahead and his heart drops into his stomach.

It's a cemetery. Tall headstones in grim lines, smell of incense, flowers and earth. He stops just outside its perimeter, swallows hard. Zoro has already disappeared inside but Sanji can't bring himself to follow. He hates the concept of cemeteries, of the dead packed into the earth so tight instead of being set free at sea. But he knows it's different for Zoro and for everyone else who calls land home. He won't ever understand it, but he knows his place.

So he walks back to the maple tree, forcing himself to take calm, slow steps. He hops up and sits cross-legged on one of the lower branches, watching the entrance to the cemetery out of the corner of his eye, waiting for Zoro to come back. The cicadas are quieter here, for which he's grateful, although still too loud for him to successfully consign them to background noise.

He has a pretty good idea where they are now, considering the dojo they passed and the cemetery. Zoro's reaction too was telling. He'd be lying if he said it didn't put him on edge, but the question now is how they got here, why they're here, and why they're in the state they're in. He swipes a hand at the branch above him and it passes through with no resistance. He grimaces. Fucking fantastic.

He sees Zoro running back to him now, backlit by the setting sun, and he notices that Zoro has no shadow. Zoro is frowning, expression confused, uneasy, wary.

"What? What's wrong?"

"It's not there," Zoro says quietly.

"What's not?" He already knows the answer the moment he asks. But it doesn't make sense.

Zoro looks at him, jaw tight, thumb running over the hilt of Wadou. He glances back over his shoulder and then to Sanji again. He speaks as if he can't believe himself. "Her grave. It's not there."

Sanji opens his mouth to say something—but what could he say? Stay? Don't go back? Wait, wait—but Zoro is already running back to the village.

.

.

He's outside the dojo again. It's quiet now. Practice must be over. It's evening after all. Cicada song in the air. Of course. It's summer. They'll be singing throughout the night. He won't mind. He's used to them.

He steps through the gate, past the sign with the proud characters that read _Isshin_.

Now that he's inside, he can hear the clack of shinai coming from the rear courtyard, the sound of children's voices. He knows instinctively what today is, knows it deep down in his gut. He thinks he might be afraid. He's not sure.

He toes off his boots anyway, and goes up the steps and into the dojo, straight into the training room with the row of shinai he knows are lined up against the wall like waiting soldiers, their shadows a long salute. And there, sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, legs folded underneath him, unmoving, is his sensei. Zoro walks up to him, drops to his knees in front of him. He looks younger than Zoro remembers, his face not as lined, his hair not as streaked with grey.

Koshiro's eyes snap open suddenly and this startles Zoro, who has to stop himself from diving for cover. He's staring straight at him—or through him. Zoro can't tell, only knows that his breath has caught in his throat and he can't move. They stay like this for what feels like hours, Zoro's existence narrowed down to the line of Koshiro's cutting gaze. Sensei, it's me, he wants to say, but can't. Koshiro's eyes behind his glasses are focused and sharp.

But then Koshiro smiles, expression softening, and his eyelids drop again. He looks content, at peace, and the tension evaporates from the room, leaving Zoro feeling cold. Zoro whips his head around, heart hammering in his chest, to see the cook standing by the door to the dojo. Zoro spares Koshiro one last urgent look before he gets up and strides over to the cook, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him down the steps, all in silence.

The cook doesn't even complain about being manhandled. "Zoro, this is crazy," he whispers as he waits for Zoro to pull his boots back on.

Zoro nods. It is crazy, but that doesn't explain anything. Instead he says, "I know what today is. Today is her two thousandth win."

As if to punctuate his statement, the clatter of shinai falling to the ground sounds from the rear courtyard, followed by a boy's disbelieving voice announcing, "K-Kuina wins, two thousand to zero!"

Zoro knows what happens next. He can see it already. She will call him pathetic, angling her shinai and glaring down its length at him. Sensei will come out to poke fun, and then he'll throw his shinai to the floor in a fit of childish rage, and then he'll proclaim—

"I'll go out to sea and become the strongest! I won't lose to anyone!"

The cook is looking in the direction of the voices, cigarette smoldering between two slack fingers. "Zoro," he says, brow furrowed. "That's not…"

The cook freezes as a small boy darts past them and out through the gate, disappearing down the street. There's no mistaking that head of green hair, that headlong run. The cook plops down next to Zoro on the steps. "Shit," he sums up succinctly. "That _is_ you. Should we follow?"

"No." Zoro shakes his head. "Let's stay here," he says gruffly, his stomach churning, fingers of dread closing around his throat, prickle of apprehension.

He knows the boy is only running off to train some more in isolation, lifting boulders and swatting at training dummies. And later tonight, when it gets dark, he'll sneak back in, dragging with him the two katana he had taken from the dojo in his hometown, long ago. He'll challenge her to their two-thousand-and-first duel. She'll win. And then—

He can hear sensei's voice behind him, and hers. Their footsteps, soft. The swish of sliding doors. Then quiet but for the cicadas, the whistle of a single shinai cutting through air, a girl's lone voice muttering kiai. Zoro shivers, closes his eyes against the sun, a deep orange disc sinking into the horizon.

.

.

They sit there until the sun goes all the way down and the stars and moon come out. It's a warm night, and the cicadas are still clicking away. The cook has been smoking nonstop, but Zoro notices that every time he stubs out a cigarette, the butt of it disappears as soon as it hits the ground. He takes the carton of cigarettes from him, counts the sticks and hands it back. After the cook goes through another three cigarettes, he takes the carton again and counts the same number of sticks, not even one less. He tosses it back and the cook pockets it quietly.

"Weird, huh?"

He nods, dips his hand into the stone of the steps for the hundredth time, wiggles his fingers. Punches the cook's arm lightly—his fist doesn't go through. That's something.

The cook doesn't even react, only asks again, "Are you sure you don't remember anything else?"

"We left Water 7 on our new ship," he recites for the third time, closing his eyes. "Franky joined us. Everyone was excited, happy. It was smooth sailing as far as I can remember. And then something happened and I woke up here with you."

"There was an old guy. In a little boat. He's what happened."

"Right."

"But what did he want?"

"Maybe," Zoro says, voice low, "he sent us here to change something."

"Zoro." The caution in the cook's tone makes him angry. "I don't think that's—"

"Shut up. Look, I'm coming back."

And there he is, a scrawny boy with his green hair cut close, awkwardly scaling the outer wall of the dojo. He drops to the ground, runs past them towards the rear courtyard, the scabbards of his two katana tapping a staccato rhythm against his heels.

Zoro blinks and suddenly he's there again, in the courtyard standing witness to their last duel. Her two-thousand-and-first victory against him is much like her previous two thousand victories. Quick and effortless, discipline and singular form against desperate, furious ambition. Even back then he had realized, deep down in some secret place, that he was no match for her yet. Their two-thousand-and-first duel ends with him in a heap on the ground, her kneeling over him with a look of burning disdain. The only difference this time is the gleam of metal blades in the moonlight.

"She's better than you," the cook says from behind him. He doesn't mean it as an insult, Zoro knows.

Was she really that small, he wonders? She seemed so big back them, always taller than him, always leaps and bounds ahead. Eyes dark like her father's, but her mouth is solemn where Koshiro's is always smiling. Now, with the advantage of all the years he got to live and she didn't, he towers over her, almost twice her height. And if he reaches out, he could enclose the entire girth of her arm in the circle of his fingers.

"You're lucky, Zoro," she's saying to him, the two of them sitting on the back steps of the dojo.

Their voices crackle, like den den mushis with bad reception. She's crying and he's yelling. Their words are dropped, distorted, fizzing and popping like soda water. But that's fine. He knows this conversation by heart. He watches them clasp hands, he sees her laugh. The boy turns to leave—

In a flash it's daytime, sudden blinding sunlight. He's in the street again. There are people calling his name, but when he turns around, the group of kids rushes past him. Someone else grabs his arm—it's the cook—and pulls him over to the side of the road.

"Zoro, what's going on?"

Zoro stares after the kids, hears them yelling his name at the top of their lungs. They're looking for him, they need to tell him—it's the day after—she's—

No.

.

.

Something sweeps across his vision and when he blinks, it's night again. The young Zoro and—what was her name? Kuina—Kuina are on the steps again, talking in their static hiss voices like white noise, like cicada song. He can make out words—_best, promise, number one_. They clasp hands, she laughs. He just watched this.

Zoro—the real Zoro, the Zoro who is still solid to him—strides forward just as his young counterpart gets up to leave.

"Get back here!" Zoro is shouting, frantic and angry. "Don't you dare go!"

But the young Zoro doesn't listen, is already walking away from them and from Kuina, glancing back only to nod a goodbye. Kuina gives a little wave.

"Zoro, stop it."

But Zoro lunges, tries to grab the kid and pull him back, but his hand passes through again and again and again. "Listen to me, you idiot! You have to stay with her!"

He tries to drag Zoro away and gets an elbow to his nose for his trouble. "Fuck!" He tastes blood, but he can't concern himself with that right now. "Zoro, stop it! He can't hear you!"

"No," Zoro growls. "No. Back. Again."

Everything shifts, and they go back. Kuina and the young Zoro on the steps. Crying, yelling. The promise. The young Zoro won't stay this time either.

Rewind. Again. The same.

Rewind.

Zoro shouting himself hoarse. Rewind. Steps, promise, goodbye. Static and cicadas. Rewind.

"Zoro, stop!" He knocks Zoro over, pins him to the ground with his knees on Zoro's forearms. Zoro is breathing hard, feral.

"Get off me."

"You can't keep doing this!"

"Get off me! I have to go after her!"

Sanji is taken aback, and Zoro takes the opportunity to throw him off like a rag doll.

"Wha—" But Zoro is already bolting inside and Sanji can do nothing but pick himself up and follow. Inside it's too dark to see clearly, but he can just make out Kuina's silhouette at the top of a set of stairs. A chill runs down Sanji's spine. Something's about to happen. He doesn't know what, but he _feels_ it.

She pauses to answer Koshiro in the other room. "Everything's fine, papa. I'm just getting my whetstone." Her voice is stretched and warped, too deep, and it seems to hang in the air even after she's done speaking, seems to cling to the walls and unfurl along the corridor like a musty, moth-eaten carpet.

Her pause gives Zoro the time to step in front of her, but she doesn't even notice him when she turns around, already starting her way down.

He can see Zoro's arms out in front of him, as if trying to push her back by sheer force of will. He can see Zoro's wild-eyed look. Zoro is taking a step back for every step Kuina takes forward, a precise give-and-take except she has no idea. He can see Zoro mouthing the word _don't_.

Sanji reaches the top of the stairs, and he knows he has to help Zoro stop her. Stop her, something bad is going to happen, _stop her_. He throws out a hand to take hold of Kuina's arm, the back of her shirt, anything, anything.

What's down there that Zoro is trying to keep her from? Is this when it happens? Is this how she—

"Wait!" he calls out, even though he knows she can't hear him.

What happens next seems slowed down to quarter speed. Gratuitous, he will think later, bitterly. His heartbeat pounding like drums in his ears, and the cicadas outside, always the fucking cicadas.

She pitches to the side, a misstep in the dark, her ankle twisting sharply. Sanji imagines he hears a crack, loud but languorous, like thick, ancient ice giving under a heavy weight.

A gasp escapes her; sounds like an echo from within a deep, deep cave. Sounds young too, even years and years removed.

She's falling forward. Sounds like nothing.

Over the top of her head Sanji can see Zoro's expression morphing into one of absolute, crushing fear.

She's falling, and then she's falling right through Zoro, right through Zoro's open arms like he's not there at all, and he isn't, he isn't really, he must have realized that by now and the knowledge must burn and burn. And then Sanji can hear it, her body thudding and tumbling down the stairs, the sounds so vivid he can actually_see_ what he hears, like dark spots bursting in his vision.

And then it's over, a keening pulse in their ears, and slowed-down cicada song, their heartbeats, their breathing.

Time picks up again.

Zoro hasn't moved, the whites of his eyes so wide that his irises look like pinpricks. Sanji's still standing at the top of the stairs with one arm outstretched. Just over Zoro's shoulder, he can see her body, in a pool of inky blackness—just a body now, just flesh and bone, what used to be a girl, a life. Is this all it takes? The length of a flight of stairs, going down.

Zoro must have noticed something flash across his face, because he starts to turn around, but Sanji is quicker, needs to be quicker. He snaps himself to attention, grabs Zoro's collar, grabs his chin. "No," he hisses. "Don't look."

Zoro says nothing. He says nothing when Sanji hauls him back up the stairs, presses them flat against the wall to let Koshiro run past. Says nothing all through the suffocating silence of Koshiro's voiceless mourning that fills the entire house like a miasma.

Says nothing when dawn finally breaks after what seems like an eternity. Says nothing when they see Koshiro emerge from the dojo, head held high but moving with the gingerness of new grief, as if waiting to fall to pieces, as if convinced the world will end, must end, right now, and then constantly surprised that it doesn't.

Koshiro stops at the dojo's gate. He's swathed in black, which makes him seem taller, narrower. Sanji blinks and Zoro appears behind Koshiro, standing with his hand clenched around Wadou's hilt, his head bowed.

"I'm sorry," he can hear Zoro say. Just once, just two words, but already it's too much. It's now that he has to look away.

.

.

Sanji's never seen a funeral like this before. He spots the green head of young Zoro amidst the crowd of black-clad adults and the way it keeps twisting around, as if he were waiting for something or someone to show up. The hush is stifling. Sanji almost welcomes the cicadas.

He follows the funeral procession out of the village, though he can't feel the ground beneath his feet. They walk past the threadleaf maple tree and towards the cemetery. He stops just outside the perimeter again, and Zoro briefly rests a hand on his shoulder before leaving to join the rest of the procession, to walk next to his younger self like a specter.

Sanji goes back to the maple tree and takes his seat again, and waits. He tries not to think about the sprawl of her body at the bottom of those stairs. Zoro's eyes bright with panic. Zoro apologizing. The self-inflected guilt. He knows how it catches under your skin and digs deep. He knows it cuts to the marrow.

It's late afternoon by the time the last of the mourners trickle back home. It's early evening by the time Zoro shows up again, eyes blank. "You have blood on your face," Zoro states, deadpan.

Sanji breathes out slowly, letting the smoke haze the space between them, watching Zoro watch him. Then he pats the spot next to him on the tree and says softly, "Sit down, Zoro. Do you want a cigarette?"

.

.

Right now, time is standing still. Zoro can tell this because the cicadas are not singing and the leaves are not moving. The blades of grass look like actual blades when suspended in motion like that.

He has no way of knowing how long it's been like this. The sun hangs suspended over the horizon at eight o'clock. He can't count the cook's cigarette butts because they disappear as soon as he's done smoking them.

But he's not in a rush to go anywhere. They still don't know where the crew is, but it's safe to assume they're not on this island or else they would have shown up by now. Maybe they're all off reliving and struggling through their respective pasts, like he's been doing. He feels a pang in his chest to imagine his nakama going through the same pain, the same fear, this insidious feeling of helplessness. But it's clear to him now that he wouldn't be able to help them anyway. He tried his best here, tried and tried, reached and reached, and nothing came of it.

He punches the trunk of the maple tree, snarling in frustration when his fist fails to make contact yet again.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?" He scowls at the cook, who meets his gaze without flinching.

"Beat yourself up."

He gives a disbelieving snort and turns away, hand on his katana, on Wadou.

"You didn't have to apologize either, you know. Before."

"Shut up," Zoro snaps. "Shut up. You were there, you saw what happened."

"I saw that there was nothing either of us could—hey, where are you going?!"

"Don't follow me!" he snarls, walking quickly towards the cemetery, where he knows the cook won't tread. He blinks and he's at the gates, blinks again and he's inside, before her headstone with her shinai propped against the side, fresh flowers laid under her name.

He kneels before it again, willing his breathing to slow. What is he doing? He doesn't know. Can only think back to how she had passed through him like he was smoke, like he didn't matter, nothing he did mattered.

He closes his eyes. What did it feel like? Nothing. She had felt like nothing, no warmth, no cosmic collision—just terror rattling in his chest, but that was his own. She hadn't looked scared at all. Just surprised, a little confused. As if she didn't know why she should be afraid, as if it never crossed her mind that she was going to die. It hadn't crossed his either, that night.

_People are fragile_, sensei had told him, afterwards.

He's flown halfway across the cemetery before he registers the intense, bruising pain in his side. He lands without a sound, rolling through half a dozen headstones before finally skidding to a stop at the steps to the temple. He gets up with a growl, drawing Wadou, and in a heartbeat he's back at her grave. The cook is there, glaring at him and pointing the burning end of a cigarette at his face.

"Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you, asshole!"

He smacks the cook's arm away, stepping in close, pressing the tip of Wadou up against the underside of the cook's jaw. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't gut you right now," he seethes.

The cook has the gall to roll his eyes at him. "Don't be dramatic," he spits, pushing Zoro away with his knee. "And listen to me when I have something important to tell you."

Zoro doesn't sheath Wadou, slants the blade between them like a threat. "Why should I?"

"Because I'm smarter than you. Zoro, look, it's—" The cook glances at the headstones, shoulders hunched just enough for Zoro to be able to tell his discomfort. "Look," he starts again, forcing his eyes back to Zoro, jabbing his cigarette in Zoro's face again. "It's not your fault."

Zoro scoffs. "I've heard people threaten to behead me with more benevolence than that."

The cook covers his eyes and heaves a sigh. "You are insufferable," he mutters. He looks up, puts a hand on Zoro's shoulder, struggles for a moment to coordinate his features into what Zoro suspects is supposed to be a pleasant expression. "It's not your fault. All right?"

"Stop making faces at me."

The hand on his shoulder tightens painfully as the cook attempts to placate his urge to murder him. "Zo-ro," the cook grounds out. "It's not your fault. Think about it. If we were sent here to change things, to… to save her, do you think we'd be so… incorporeal?"

"Powerless, you mean." He sheathes Wadou and turns back to Kuina's headstone, the cook's hand sliding off his shoulder. He can hear the cook anxiously tapping out another cigarette. "What're we here for, then?"

"I don't know," the cook answers honestly. "I don't _remember_. But we're probably being tested. And we're obviously not doing so hot right now. We're stuck in this limbo, and I think it's because of you."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

Clink of a lighter, then a long, calming exhale. "Zoro, look at me."

He does. The cook is frowning at him. Not angry, just—sincere. "I understand. I do. But it's not your fault she's gone. Don't blame yourself."

"She went right through me."

"It's not your fault."

"I couldn't feel her at all."

The cook takes a step towards him, their noses just inches apart. Neither of them blinks.

"Zoro, if it were even _remotely_ possible for you to will yourself into being tangible, I have no doubt you would have done it. It's not that you weren't good enough to save her. It's just that you weren't supposed to."

"Not supposed to? How was I _not_ supposed to?!"

"Because it wasn't your place, Zoro!"

Zoro opens his mouth to retort, realizes his throat has closed up. It feels like the wind had just been knocked from him. He closes his eyes, wills his head to stop spinning. Is this what panic feels like? He tries to empty his mind of everything, tries to evoke the soothing lull of the ocean. It doesn't work. His heart is still beating too fast and everything is fixed, stagnant.

He hears the cook say his name. He ignores him.

Not his place? The thought comes with a dizzying sensation, and he has to ball his hands into fists to make sure they're still there because he can barely feel them.

His place is between his nakama and danger. It's always been there and no one can tell him otherwise. It's where he belongs, where he's needed. It's his job to keep everyone safe, to be there for them, to always, _always_ be there. He knows exactly where his place is. He won't budge from it.

But he recalls her face as she was just beginning to fall towards him. He wasn't there for her then, not really. No form, no shadow, no voice. How could he not be present, not be in his _place_, for the single most defining event of his life?

Maybe this isn't panic. Maybe this is what failure feels like. Real failure, different from his two-thousand-and-one losses, different from Mihawk slicing him up on deck. This is failure without the chance of a rematch. She's dead now, and she will stay dead.

Maybe the cook was right. The cook had said—

Wait.

The cook had said it wasn't his place, and maybe it wasn't, and maybe it had never been, and what does that mean? If he wasn't supposed to—

Think. Anchor yourself and think.

What defines him, what defines _her_ isn't her death, the cold ashes buried under her name. What's defining is her life, clipped though it was like the wings of her flightless namesake. Her legacy isn't that she had died so young, ambition guttering out with her life. When he remembers her, he does not think of her body lying prone, but of the live spark in her dark eyes, like a glimpse of fire deep within a forest. Their promise under the night sky.

So he goes back further, to her two thousand and one uninterrupted victories. To her hand clasping his hand tight. What did it feel like? He remembers that, though it was years ago. Her hand was calloused and warm. Solid, the both of them, and unwavering, the as yet untapped potential crackling like electricity between their bodies. The best in the world had to be one of them. Her eyes were still bright with tears, but she had looked happy, and it was because of him. Her voice was her own, and so was his, when they swore to meet at the very top. He was there for that. He was there for that, where he belonged—in place, in time.

She wasn't nakama. She wasn't. He had never promised to protect her, had never thought to, and—

He will always be wherever he had promised to be. To Luffy and the crew, he made the promise to see their dreams through to the end, and that entails keeping them alive and well—happy too, if he can manage. He hasn't failed them yet, and he doesn't intend to. He won't. His place with the crew is between them and whatever the world deems fit to throw their way.

And to her? To her, he made the promise to be the best. A crown for his head, a throne for his seat. He won't fail her either. His place with her is first, at the very top.

And her place is with him, at his side, in Wadou. In this way, he's kept her alive. In this way, she's more than ash. Not nakama but something like it, not loved but cherished nonetheless. He's not afraid to make that distinction. He doesn't dream for his nakama, his nakama who are alive and who will stay alive as long as he's around—but he will dream for her. That's a promise.

What he's supposed to do? Yes, he knows. Will he be good enough? Yes.

When he opens his eyes, he gets a face full of smoke. He doesn't grimace because his place with the cook doesn't allow room for such concessions. They're still nose to nose, and he knows neither of them will step down, and for that he's glad.

"I know it's hard," the cook says, kinder but still gruff. "But you understand, don't you?"

Zoro's answer is the breath of a summer breeze, the papery rustle of leaves, the cicadas that start again to sing.

.

.

They're back at the dojo. Zoro's younger self is on his knees before Koshiro, before the katana that Sanji knows is Wadou Ichimonji.

"Sensei! Please, gift me with her katana!"

Zoro's kneeling too, his hands on his knees, his head bowed low. The two of them side by side before Koshiro and what Kuina left behind. Like someone had grabbed time by its years and _pulled_—folding a decade together so that its beginning and end meet, just like this. The Zoro now and the Zoro then, and Kuina between them. Zoro is taller now, broader, stronger—what a difference the years can make—but Sanji can also see that he has always been the same. Determination and strength and promise. There's no room in him for anything else.

"That's fine," Koshiro says, and Sanji smiles as the kid takes Wadou, not reverently, but fiercely, protectively. Zoro mirrors his stance, holding Wadou in front of him with both hands.

"I'll become the world's number one swordsman! I'll become so strong that even heaven will hear of my great name!" Two voices in perfect unison.

_And you better_, Sanji thinks. _Or you'll have me to answer to_.

Zoro places a hand on the head of his younger self, who's sobbing over Wadou with all of a child's earnestness. He bows once more, deeply, to Koshiro, whose eyes are the same as Kuina's and who is looking at young Zoro with guarded expectation. But there's a daring hope there as well, and Sanji knows it will grow to become trust.

Zoro gets to his feet, his three katana secure at his side.

"All good?" Sanji asks, and Zoro smiles a little smile.

Suddenly, the room, the entire dojo, seems to tilt, as if someone had knocked the world over onto its side. Zoro crashes to the floor again as Sanji's thrown into the hall. A roaring, rushing noise drowns out the cicada song, a noise that Sanji immediately recognizes as ocean waves.

He turns to look down the hallway and his heart almost stops. He sees the old man in the little boat, watching him. The old man raises one hand, slowly, slowly. He's pointing at Sanji.

He's pointing and he's mouthing the words _you're next_.


	2. Chapter 2

_No one remembers now but those two, and you know how they are. So I will tell you instead. This is how it went:_

_At the edge of the Florian Triangle—they assumed it was the edge, assumed that the Triangle had real parameters, that it obeyed at least some rules of nature and logic despite this being the Grand Line—there was an old man in a little boat._

.

.

Zoro hears the ocean obliterate the soft hush of the dojo, crash through the clicking lullaby of cicadas, and he thinks it's over. The Sunny must have come to take them home, the crew waving and calling from her decks, smiling. Chopper will be crying, maybe; Usopp will be pretending he isn't. Luffy will want to hear all about everything, will pull and shove and whine at him until captain gets his way, but Zoro really just wants to take a long, well-deserved nap. A man is allowed that much luxury, isn't he?

But he sees the cook sprawled in the hallway, a heap of black-clad limbs and awkward angles. Sees the cook's head whip to the side suddenly, his eyes going wide, white. Zoro frowns. The cook's hand braced against the wall, the topography of his bones straining beneath his skin—no, that's not relief.

Then comes an ominous creaking Zoro can feel deep in his gut, and he looks down to see the wooden floors of the dojo splintering, the planks surging upwards to offer their fingers of jagged wood.

The dojo walls are dissolving in bursts of sea spray. He whirls around, salt thick on his tongue, just in time to see Koshiro and his younger self flicker out of existence. And then he's falling backwards, the floor suddenly rain-slick beneath his feet—there's the flapping of canvas sails in the wind, frantic voices somewhere beyond the curtain of rain.

He falls for much longer than is comprehensible, whirling about until he can no longer tell up from down. When his back finally collides with something solid, it all goes—

.

.

Sanji remembers this scene. He can almost taste the old leather of Zeff's boot in his mouth, between his teeth. Sea salt too, from the waves sweeping the deck. The rain had tasted mild despite its driven frenzy. He remembers. It was almost sweet.

.

.

There's a moment of hard sunshine and a light sea breeze, familiar and inviting, before the world stutters and twists, inverts itself in a sickening lurch.

Then Zoro sputters. Or he feels like he should.

Rain is coming down in relentless sheets again, falling from a sky angry and black, but the drops are not pelting him as they should; instead, he feels nothing, no cold, no wetness on his skin, and it's such a disconnect that it takes him a moment to place himself again. A jagged strike of lightning suddenly floods his vision with white, and for one brief second he can see the violent, churning sea on all sides, the crash of waves and thunder loud enough to make him flinch.

He can just make out the cook standing with his back to him, suit still perfectly dry and pressed despite the winds and rain whipping about. Then the cook moves, bolting forward into the dark, and Zoro doesn't think, only follows instinctively.

"Oi!" Zoro shouts after him, but it's no use; he can barely hear himself over the storm. He follows the cook to the very edge of the island, where it's a sheer drop down to the water. He looks around him again when the next bolt of lightning strikes and he sees the island is hardly bigger the Thousand Sunny. Nothing but desolate land and rocks. No sign of life but the two of them, and they hardly count. The thunder is a rattle in his throat, makes his hands go numb.

Then he sees it, a gigantic, white-tipped wave on the horizon coming towards them fast, growing big enough to dwarf the island completely. The cook sees it too, is watching it approach, his posture tight with anticipation, or maybe dread. Zoro stands next to him, because might as well meet this madness head on, carelessly confident that the two of them together could take on the sea.

The moment of impact comes and passes and he doesn't feel it. The wave is still surging over them, and though it looks like he's submerged, he feels currents of air instead of ocean—surprisingly gentle despite the roaring in his ears, detached, like an afterthought against his skin, through his hair. Gigantic pieces of wreckage are swirling past at enormous speeds; he doesn't even have time to recoil when the remains of what used to be a foremast go right through his head.

Then the water is receding as rapidly as it came, as if someone on the horizon were drinking it all in one huge swallow, like it were rum instead of brine. The heavy, lightning-charged clouds furling away like sails, the sun wheeling across the sky in fast-forward. When Zoro looks down again, he sees that the ground is already dry and cracked and the sea is a vast, blue sheen. It's like a different world entirely, though he feels the same—out of place. How long had he been standing there gaping at the sky?

He realizes the cook is not next to him anymore.

There. He turns to find the cook propped up against a large boulder. Except—no, that can't be the cook, because this is a small child, wearing white not black, with hair the same blond though it's matted and tangled in a way the cook would never allow. Sitting next to him is a man, but that's not the cook either. This man has a different build, is broader in the shoulders, wider in the jaw, and taller, older. It takes Zoro a moment to recognize him as the one who had kicked the cook through their table at the Baratie the first time they met. Except this man doesn't have a wooden leg; this man is whole, albeit haggard and worn.

So this is how it's going to be.

"Yo," Zoro calls, one hand raised in greeting.

No response, but then again he wasn't expecting one. He sweeps his gaze around the island—the rock, really—once more but the cook is nowhere to be found. He tells himself not to be scared, and it's easy because he's never scared. Tells himself not to worry, and that's easy too, because the cook's proven he can take care of himself, that he knows how to handle things.

"Guess I'm stuck with you guys for now," he says, trying for nonchalance.

He thinks he hears a seagull, but it's just his imagination. Everything is quiet now, dead-still.

.

.

_There was an old man in a little boat, and as far as men and boats went, the two were unremarkable._

_Luffy entertained for a while the possibility of the old man being a sea monkey in disguise, because that would be interesting and exciting. He always thought sea monkeys would make good pets, despite their tsunami-inducing tendencies, and this one came with its own boat. He was sure even Nami would agree it was a good bargain._

_But this man wasn't a sea monkey, which Chopper, or anyone else on the crew who was not Luffy, could have told you._

_What they probably couldn't have told you though, except perhaps for Robin if she was looking close enough, was that this man was a god._

_God did exist. Gods. Many of them, in fact, even if Zoro didn't believe in them or need them. Not all of them were from outer space, like the one you've encountered, and not all of them live in the sky above the clouds. Some of them answered prayers, but most didn't bother. They were not so fascinating, truthfully, when compared to the other marvels one might find in the Grand Line. But they did exist, here and there, in the nooks and crannies of the world, and in all kinds of forms._

_So, yes. This man was a god. Don't be so surprised._

.

.

The cook is nowhere to be found, so instead Zoro watches Sanji (because the kid is Sanji, has not yet grown up to be the insufferable bastard he calls "idiot" and "asshole" and "cook"). Sanji takes his rations and sits facing west, where the setting sun is a deep orange disc sinking into the horizon. The connection is not lost on Zoro; it's the same scene, even with an expanse of ocean between here and Shimotsuki. Maybe this is how all tragedies start. If he concentrates, he can conjure up a strain of distant cicada song. Music for waiting.

He doesn't have to wait long, because suddenly Sanji is sobbing, and he sounds so young and vulnerable that Zoro feels like he's trespassing on something secret. The cook has never, ever sounded like that, in all the time that Zoro's known him, but this Sanji is a child, and that's what children do—they cry. In times such as this, they cry for what they know, for what's familiar and comforting yet far away.

He wonders if it says something about them, that while other children cry for their mothers, the two of them cry for things that can easily crush them—for a rival, for the sea.

He senses a flare of something dark and dangerous from the other side of the island. Feels like despair. He wills himself there in an instant and he sees the cook standing behind Zeff, fists clenched at his sides—a worrying sign if ever there were one. Zeff is holding a large, jagged rock above his head, and at first glance Zoro thinks he's frozen in time, but then he sees the almost imperceptible movements, like Zeff is a picture that won't stop flickering. Zoro looks out to the ocean and notices that the waves are the same way, flickering like a shaky image, imperfectly still.

"Cook," Zoro says quietly, drawing close.

No answer. The cook is too focused on rewinding this half-second over and over, trying to keep the inevitable at bay. Zoro sets his jaw, grabs the cook by his collar and jerks him away from Zeff. The cook's feet make no sound dragging across the barren ground.

And even as Zoro shakes him, the cook says nothing, and Zoro realizes that he is holding his breath, lips sealed shut, chest rigid like a wall, ribs locked.

"You know we're not going to get anywhere like this." Zoro tries to keep his voice calm and even. Tries not to shout; it would be too jarring in this stuttering hush.

The cook shakes his head, doesn't look at Zoro, doesn't breathe. Head bowed, fists pressed against Zoro's shoulders, half to push him away, half to steady himself.

"Cook," Zoro says. "We don't have all day."

"There's no—" And the cook's voice cracks, like a fissure opening up in the earth, like the Red Line splitting in two. "There's no food in his bag. He gave all of it to me."

There's a brief rushing sound as one second, two, slip by. The cook inhales sharply, horrified, and immediately clamps his mouth shut again, hunches his shoulders. Zoro glances behind them and sees that the rock in Zeff's hands is now hovering just inches above his leg.

And suddenly Zoro realizes what Zeff is going to do, how both he and Sanji survived their time on the rock. There's a brief jolt of shock, but that's immediately smoothed over by a solemn, bitter acceptance because Zoro _understands_. The cook must understand, too.

Because Zoro knows neither of them would hesitate to destroy themselves, rip their own bodies apart piece by piece if it meant life for another, or for a dream. No one would be able to stop them, even if anyone dared. So he knows they can't stop Zeff, and he knows he would do the same in Zeff's place. He knows the cook would do the same. It isn't a boast, it's just simple fact, like the history that Robin deciphers and the storms that Nami predicts. Like Luffy becoming the Pirate King, like Usopp being brave, like Chopper and Franky being as human as any of them.

But when it's someone else's sacrifice for their sake, then that's something like blasphemy, the antithesis of everything they strive for (reminds them invincibility is tenuous like a ship in the Calm Belt), impossible to swallow because it's like acid burning down your throat.

That's why they don't get along, the cook and Zeff, the cook and himself, because they occupy the same small places meant only for one. They are too similar, love too much in the same way—aggressively, clumsily, like a challenge, chin raised in defiance, I dare you to push me away, I dare you to doubt me. They're too close, breathing the same thin air. They have too much to give, and give, and give, but no need of any of it from each other. Besides, you don't cut yourself open for monsters; you fight them, even the ones you call nakama. You fight and you stay close. You don't get along.

But on the other side of the island, there is only a boy, not a monster, not yet, and Zeff's sacrifice is for him. You cut yourself open for the innocent.

"Don't watch, then." Zoro puts himself squarely between the cook and Zeff. He reaches up, turns the cook's face up to him, palm over the erratic pulse in the cook's neck, thumbs pressing hard into the cook's cheekbones. "But he's going to do it."

"He has a dream. Same as mine. He deserves—he _deserved_—"

"So do you."

Here, now, the cook is Sanji again, looking young and miserable, but he's vicious too, and yes, _monstrous_, thirsting for his own blood if it means he will succeed in this. Sanji glares at him as he tries to staunch the flow of time like blood from a wound, and Zoro thinks Sanji might shake himself all to pieces with how hard he's trembling.

"Don't," Sanji grounds out between his teeth, and his voice sounds thin and strained and fierce. "Leave me alone."

"No," Zoro says. Doesn't mention how Sanji's nails are digging into his arms, drawing first blood. "I can stand here forever if I need to."

He thinks Sanji's taken him up on the challenge, because Sanji would, the stupid bastard, and they do stand there for a long, long time, Sanji snarling at him, face flushed red from the exertion of holding the world still. Stubborn.

But Zoro is expecting that. Zoro knows he couldn't ask someone as neurotically and infuriatingly selfless as Sanji to choose himself over another, even if "himself" is a small, terrified child alone and hungry. Sanji has no taste for mercy or compassion when it's turned inward, picky in a way he never is with food. Zoro knows. So Zoro is prepared to choose for him.

And it's easy, to choose Sanji.

"I'm just returning the favor, you know," Zoro says, and Sanji narrows his eyes at him, irises sharp and blue and hard, lips a thin, uncompromising line. Zoro just shrugs, fingers still splayed over the nape of Sanji's neck, Sanji's pulse pounding like war drums under his palm.

Sanji opens his mouth, probably to growl an insult or maybe an eloquent _fuck off_, but Zoro interrupts him by knocking their heads together, hard enough to rattle his brain in his skull. Sanji's eyes go all blurry and unfocused, his jaw going slack, and he sways just a bit on his feet. Zoro almost feels smug as Sanji inhales reflexively, short and faltering—but then from behind Zoro, there is a wet thud, dull crunch. A low, strangled cry, almost a whine, but Zeff wouldn't allow himself such an indulgence.

Zoro swallows with difficultly, letting the sound of the waves rush back in to fill the pockets of dead space, moving to make sure Sanji can't see Zeff behind him. Returning the favor, he wills Sanji to understand. Sanji is staring at him now, expression caught between horror and disbelief, colored with betrayal. His hands slowly relax so that they are no longer fists, and that's warning enough. Zoro waits grimly for the fallout.

It comes in the form of a single kick to his solar plexus, pinpoint accurate, and Zoro can actually feel it messing him up inside, which means Sanji has rocketed straight to homicidal rage. And suddenly Zoro is _furious_, even as he fights the urge to wheeze like an old man. How dare the cook be angry with him? How could anyone have the audacity to be so fucking _stupid_? You think I'd stand by and let you torture yourself over this? I'll put you out of your fucking misery myself.

Sanji—no, the _cook_—spits out the blood that's welled up in his mouth from where he had bit down on his tongue. He starts to say something, mouth a bright, explicit red, but Zoro cuts him off.

"No, you listen to me, you ungrateful son of a—"

He's ready to snap the cook in two with his bare hands, knows the cook is ready to do the same, but the next hit never comes. Instead, the cook doubles over and retches, painful, choking heaves. Blood spots the ground, dark. The cook clutches at his chest. Acid burning.

The anger leaves him in a cold rush and Zoro lowers his arms, has to turn his head away to the dimming horizon.

.

.

"I just wanted to—"

"I know."

"Couldn't watch him do it. I know he does, but it's different, when you're faced with it. When you know it's happening as it happens, and you're right there, and you can't—"

"I get it. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"It's over now. Leave it."

But it doesn't get easier after that.

He discovers he can't bend time to his will anymore, can't cycle through the days and nights like he expected, hoped. But surely the test was to allow Zeff's sacrifice, to accept it, understand all that it meant, be thankful for it, give himself up to the gratitude, let it blister his soul, and then, finally, forgive himself. It took him ten years to do it last time, but he could do it again. Without Zoro head-butting him, thank you very much.

Surely they could fast-forward to the end now. The healing comes afterwards; there's nothing else to see here on this fucking rock. It's not a rare or remarkable thing, after all, for a boy to starve.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep drag on his cigarette. Imagines time as a heavy rope, frayed and salt-crusted, attached to an achieved future-past he's already lived and is trying again to reach. Imagines himself pulling, feet firmly planted, weight thrown back, but the rope doesn't budge no matter how much he strains, the days and months heavy and coarse in his hands. He hefts the rope, considers its mass—that's eighty-five days right there, all twisted together, and it feels impossibly long, enough to wrap the circumference of the world. That's more than two thousand hours, more than a hundred thousand minutes, more than—

He hears Zoro call for him, and he opens his eyes to see Zoro pointing at his feet. He looks down and almost falls over himself in his panic.

His feet have sunk into the ground without him noticing, concentrated as he was on trying to pull time forward. When he tries to move, he only sinks deeper. Like quicksand, he thinks and then terror seizes him and wipes his mind of everything but old nightmares of being trapped inside earth forever and no, no, he would kill himself first, he _would_—

"Stop it," Zoro grumbles, grabs him and hauls him up and out effortlessly. Sets him on his feet again, above ground. "Stop flailing, you idiot. You're fine."

He's not fine. He's not. He is. He breathes. Fine. _Fine_.

"Can't do it," he croaks. "We're stuck." Bad choice of words. He pushes down the panic threatening to rise again. "I mean, we're here. Going to be here for a while."

Zoro gives him a look that implies he is probably not understanding the gravity of the situation. Or maybe Zoro does, but he knows they're going to be ok anyway. And they will be, but. It's a long time to wait.

"Sorry," Sanji offers. "Sorry." And then he goes away.

.

.

Zoro stays on the island, even if the cook won't and can't bring himself to. Zoro sees him out there sometimes, walking on the water, his cigarette smoke an off-white smudge against the sky. The cook doesn't come back until after the sun has set, and he stays only to spend the night with Zeff, to keep him company in the darkest hours. Then he's gone again, come dawn.

"What's out there?" Zoro had asked him after his third return.

"Nothing."

It's a different kind of test, this one. It's endurance, and already Zoro is exhausted.

He's exhausted and he's not even doing anything, _can't_ do anything. But fatigue begins to creep up on him anyway as he watches nine-year-old Sanji day after excruciating day. His head and arms and legs feel like they're made of rusted metal. Still, it's better than waving his hands futilely through the world like he's so much nothing. _That_ hurts, in a twisting kind of way, so he tries to just keep still, sit on his hands, wait it out.

He's not very good at doing nothing. Sometimes, he can't help himself.

Like on the third day, when Sanji spent the better half of the afternoon and more strength than he should have dragging over a splintered crow's nest, propping it up to serve as a makeshift shelter against the unforgiving sun and oncoming rain. Zoro had tried to lift the damned thing himself, take it off Sanji's bony, narrow shoulders, growling with frustration and trepidation, but he might as well have been dust for all the good he did.

He lasted longer on the fifth day, though it was harder. He watched, tight-lipped, as a ship passed by in another storm. Watched Sanji yell until his throat was raw and the sodden woodpile refuse to catch fire. He watched Sanji collapse in the rain, slamming his fists into the hard, wet earth. That's what finally did it, the sight of Sanji battering his hands so thoughtlessly. He rose and hunted after the ship, tried to pull it back by its anchor line. He went on board and cursed the sailors over the rumble-crash of thunder. Tried to possess the captain but that failed too, and in a snap he was back on the island with Sanji, whose small form had fallen alarmingly still.

On the twenty-fifth day, when Sanji stared down at his last piece of bread, something dangerously close to pity knotted in Zoro's chest. The bread was moldy all over, disgusting and hardly edible. He wanted to slap it out of Sanji's hands, couldn't bear to see Sanji regard that pathetic morsel like it was precious treasure—like it was a piece of All Blue within his trembling grasp. But when Sanji _did_ drop it, right into the ocean, the sound of utter despair he made stabbed and twisted into Zoro like guilt and then Zoro hated himself.

That day, Sanji stayed perilously close to the edge for a long time, staring into the sunlit water, and Zoro stood by, terrified, waiting to fail to stop him.

("Where'd you go when that wave hit?" he had asked the cook some days—weeks?—earlier. "The first day we were here."

"I jumped in. Couldn't stay. Not here."

Zoro had almost punched him then.)

After the twenty-fifth day, Zoro was ready to rip the sky down. He didn't want there to be any more days after that one.

But there were. There _are_. There are so many more. And he is watching Sanji starve, fingers pressed to his thin wrist to count the beats of his pulse, waiting.

Zoro needs to keep sane, somehow. He can't meditate because he has to bear witness, has to pay _attention_ and acknowledge what's happening here, especially when the rest of the world isn't. So he takes to talking to Sanji, telling him all the ways he'll become the biggest pain in the ass that Zoro's ever met, trying to fill Sanji's days with something other than emptiness and his own lonely heartbeat. But since Zoro is honest, he will admit that his words only reassure himself because Sanji can't hear them. Sanji can't know what Zoro knows, that he'll get off this godforsaken rock and run full-tilt into Luffy one day and set off to sail the Grand Line in search of All Blue. That he'll grow up to save lives and kingdoms and dreams.

"Something like a hero, I guess," Zoro says grudgingly. "With a hilarious wanted poster. Wait 'til you see it."

And most importantly, that Sanji can be happy again, that this nightmare will end, as all nightmares must.

"You believe me, right?" he asks Sanji, who gives no sign of having heard him, who was already small and is getting smaller, feeding on nothing but hope that crumbles like sand in his mouth.

.

.

Even now, Zeff sits straight-backed and formidable, though his leg is a ruined mess and the shadows on his face, before the sun rises, are deep and stark. The pieces of his once-proud ship still rise and fall with the waves below, but there are fewer of them now, and Zeff has gotten better at ignoring them. Only a few times does Sanji see Zeff bring a hand to his stomach, and when he does, Sanji does the same, presses down on his own belly experimentally, tenderly, as if he can't believe his own flesh is still there.

He's not hungry, he tells himself. He's not hungry and he doesn't need to eat. He doesn't feel his stomach devouring itself, the dizziness or the sluggishness or the slow burn in his gut. He should, but he doesn't. And it doesn't hurt to move. When he looks in the water, his eyes are not sunken and his cheeks are not hollow. He still looks like himself. He is not cold.

But the same desperation is there, and it gnaws at him like hunger, makes him anxious and restless. He paces over the water, nine strides and back, nine strides and back. How many days has it been? Has he been keeping count correctly? Maybe it's actually the fiftieth instead of fortieth. Maybe this will be over quicker than he thought. Maybe—oh god, has it really been so long since he's eaten? His body must be lying to him, his reflection must be lying to him. He must be hallucinating. He needs to eat, he _has_ to be starving, there is no way he's not and—

Zoro.

Oh god, _Zoro_.

.

.

Zoro turns around and the cook is there, looking wild-eyed and hunted. He gets to his feet, warily, and waits for the cook to make a move.

The past few days have not been good. The young Sanji spent most of his waking hours muttering to hallucinations under the slanting rays of the sun, eyes glassy and lips chapped. Sometimes Zoro thinks Sanji is talking to him, only to realize that Sanji is staring straight through him at another phantom, one even less real. Sometimes Sanji smiles, mind half-gone, and that's the worst of it all.

"Zoro," the cook says, taking a step forward.

"What? What's wrong with you?"

"I—" The cook pauses and looks confused for a second before purposefully closing the distance. He asks, "Are you hungry?"

It's a question the cook's asked him countless times before, usually in a bored drawl, sometimes screamed irritably at the tail-end of a fight as they are both stalking away from each other, and once in a while called up to him in the crow's nest during night watch. It's not a question that should take Zoro by surprise, but this time it does because the cook's never asked it in this tone before, nervous, voice slightly higher than normal.

"No, I'm not," he says carefully.

The cook stares at him. "You're not?"

"No." He shrugs, gauging the cook's reaction. "Didn't think to be hungry."

And that's true. The only real memory of starvation he has is of the time he was captured by Morgan, awaiting the return of his swords and yes, his next meal. When he counted the days, he was counting down towards (what he perceived to be) a certainty, that he would be freed and would eat again after a month, as promised. So no, he hadn't thought to be hungry, only anticipatory, especially here and now, where he doesn't actually need to eat at all.

"Stop being stupid," says the cook, whose own memory, Zoro realizes now, is of uncertainty and of very real, debilitating hunger, of having to count up instead of down, tallying the days since his rations ran out, with no way of knowing when he'll eat again and if he could wait that long. Each passing day a guarded triumph and a crushing disappointment.

"Cook…"

"You should eat when you can. Sorry. Sorry. Hold on, I'll make something."

And the cook turns, as if he actually intends to walk into his kitchen and fire up the stove, start pulling things from a fully-stocked fridge. He gets as far as two steps before he stops, shoulders tensing.

Zoro doesn't know how to defuse the situation, so he tries again, very quietly, "Cook."

"You're hungry." The cook doesn't turn around, his voice tight. "I just—sorry—let me—we should have—"

Zoro steps around him so that they are facing each other again. "I'm not hungry," he repeats. "I don't need to eat now. You don't either."

"Of course you need to eat, Zoro." The cook does not look at him, eyes fixed instead on some spot in the distance. "Just give me a second to think, I'm sure—"

"When we get back, you can make something and we'll eat. With the rest of the crew. But for now, we're fine."

"We're not fine. It's been weeks. Hasn't it? Maybe there's some—"

"_No_." He puts a hand out to stop the cook from moving away. "There isn't anything. You _know_ that."

At this, the cook's expression hardens and his eyes focus on Zoro. He looks almost pained, but Zoro doesn't care. For days he's had to watch Sanji desperately turn over rocks and dig in the ground until his nails cracked and his hands bled, always coming up empty handed, too exhausted afterwards to even cry. He doesn't want to watch the cook do it now after his younger self.

"Sorry," the cook says, low and hoarse. "Sorry."

"Shut up," Zoro snaps. "We're fine. Trust me, all right?" he insists.

"You're not hungry." Slowly, almost disbelievingly.

"No."

"You're not just saying that, Zoro."

"I'm not hungry. Are you?"

The cook doesn't answer right away, looking confused again, holding a hand briefly to his stomach. "No," he says finally.

Zoro nods. "What'd I tell you? We're fine. You should listen to me more. Have another cigarette. Hell, give me one too."

The cook blinks and then gives him a wry, tired smile. Better. A good sign.

Zoro wonders how much longer they have to go.

.

.

On the seventieth day, Sanji goes to Zeff with a knife.

Zoro dogs after him and finds the cook already there, watching his younger self stumble close, his eyes critical and merciless. The cook does not look away.

Now, the thump of Zeff's back hitting the ground is almost no sound at all. Zoro watches as realization after horrifying realization washes over Sanji until he is struggling to keep his head above everything—and he is so very small.

Zeff's voice and Sanji's voice, light and soft like sea foam caught in the wind. Insubstantial. Sanji is still a child, not a monster, not yet, but he'll grow. He has to. He's promising, right now, listen. They keep their promises. Zoro finds comfort in that.

"Almost over," the cook says to him over the huddled forms of his past. This time Zoro follows him when he leaves.

.

.

_You've heard the stories, about the disappearances. Ships have gone missing in the Florian Triangle for centuries: pirate ships and Marine ships and huge bulk carriers gone astray from Water 7 (less of those now, with the Sea Train in service). Hundreds of them over the years, never to be seen or heard from again. It's been happening long before that joker Gekko Moria and his shadow-stealing gang—but I'm getting ahead of myself. You don't know who that is yet, do you?_

_But you know now who the old man is, though his true form is something infinitely larger, darker, with eyes that glint red through the white mists of his home. The best guess that the Strawhats had, however, was "sea monkey in disguise, definitely." Or maybe just an old man. There were ordinary things on the Grand Line too, though not many of them, admittedly._

_But you've heard the stories. You should remember, for your own sake, that all stories are true. (Even—or especially—the ones told by long-nosed sharpshooters. They all come true in time.)_

.

.

It takes him a while to find the cook, because the cook is lying below the surface of the water. Just lying there, serene, like some creepy specimen in a giant blue-green glass case. Zoro stands over him, arms crossed.

"What are you doing?"

The cook opens his eyes to look at him. "Oh, marimo," he says, as if he were lying in his bunk on the Sunny instead of _in_ the ocean. Which would actually be just as weird, because the cook doesn't have much downtime on the Sunny, and certainly not enough for an afternoon nap like this.

The currents carry away the cook's cigarette smoke before it can break the surface—the smoke swims along like a misshapen ghost fish. The cook shifts with the waves.

"Weirdo."

"Am not," the cook dismisses. He reaches a hand up, through the surface of the water, and Zoro grabs it and pulls him up. "It's nice under there."

"Yeah?" Zoro unsheathes his katana.

"Stops me from wanting to tear my hair out."

Zoro nods, once. He understands, he supposes. He knows that neither of them has slept for the entire time they've been here. This limbo is enough to drive anyone a little insane. He sighs, puts Wadou between his teeth and beckons.

The cook grins at him. "Unfinished business, eh?"

.

.

He grew up on old mariners' songs, sailors' legends, tales of sunken treasures and shipwrecks and mermaids, myths of shimmering, all-encompassing blue—but you can't survive on stories alone.

For all his years at sea, he knows he's still got the devil's luck in his blood, devil's fire in his bones. That's something not even salt can cleanse him of, something not even seawater can douse. It's how he's still alive against such staggering odds. It's how Luffy found him, floating around East Blue. And it's why he'll definitely, definitely find All Blue.

No, it's why All Blue exists at all, that mythical impossible ocean, because it exists for _him_, because it's possible for _him_. Him, with his devil's luck and devil's fire, and no less a child of the sea for all that. If for no other reason, All Blue exists for him. That's not presumptuous to say, is it?

No.

_Diable_—

.

.

"—_jambe_!"

During the course of their fight, Sanji's pretty sure the sun's set and risen a few times. He hasn't really been paying attention, caught up instead in the natural rhythm of their violence, unleashed again after being pent up for so long. So maybe they have been fighting for days. He wouldn't be surprised.

Zoro's hair is singed on the left side of his head, and Sanji is bleeding from a cut above his right eye. They're both covered in sweat and blood and dark, ugly bruises. They're panting, spent and exhausted. Satisfied too, that they can at least still damage each other if nothing else. Sanji stumbles a little and his foot sinks into the water, up to his ankle. He looks down and laughs, out of breath but genuinely pleased.

Then Zoro shoves him and he falls in completely, no splash, no flood in his lungs, just a cool feeling, soothing, like a balm. He has to twist away to avoid being kicked in the face when Zoro sits down on the surface, katana sheathed again, feet dangling in the water.

"Someone needs to take a picture of this. Where's Usopp when you need him."

Sanji grins his agreement.

On the rock behind them, dreams are being shared between two broken down souls with a long way to go before they mend. He was one of them, used to be skeletal and frail. Afraid, of course, but even then, he had not been meek. Bones like dry twigs, yes, but all the better to catch fire and blaze in open defiance; skin like thin parchment, on which he could spell out faith and have it seep through to his core; curves of his cheekbones like twin scimitars, his tongue sharp like a knife.

He sees now that the way he cried over Zeff was the same way Zoro cried over Kuina. Simultaneously outraged and hurt, but the despair had to be pushed aside to make room for something else—a promise, gratitude, both binding. Means they have to be strong enough to dream for two and not falter along the way. Means they have to know tenacity, know how to cut steel and burn without ever turning to ash, and how to bleed and break and rebuild taller.

And they do know. They've learned. Sanji's proud of them.

"There's a ship coming," Zoro says. It's the eighty-fifth day.

Sanji comes up to rest his elbows on the water's surface. "I know. Ready to go home, marimo?"

.

.

_When the god spoke, they could hear him perfectly, even though he was very far below and did not seem to raise his voice at all. He told them his name, but it was too full of sibilants and it slithered out of their memories as soon as they heard it._

_He said he had a test. He said he would not allow them to go further without passing this test. He said they had no choice._

_Franky laughed. Asked, what's to stop them from just coup de bursting their way through? He was proud of his ship, of me, and rightfully so, but you don't mess with a god on his home turf._

_Because suddenly, he was on board, cup of tea in hand, like he had been there all along._

_Consider it a toll, if you must, said the god, who looked taller now, less feeble._

_Still, Nami bristled. Why should they pay him anything, she demanded, always brave in the face of financial peril, and who was he again, because they had forgotten his name._

_Not money, he clarified. He had no use for money. But he was hungry. And if they couldn't pass his test, what hope did they think they had facing what lay beyond? Surely they knew there were dangers waiting for them even greater than old men in little boats. He smiled. It was unpleasant._

_So who will it be, the god asked, eyes rheumy and grey, though if you looked carefully you could see a sharpness behind them, like glacier ice that had caught some unfathomable light. If they failed, he would eat them, like he had eaten all the ships and crews who had failed before them._

_What, said Usopp. Does no one else have a problem with those terms, he asked, but everyone ignored him._

_Three voices rang out at once. I trust you can guess whose._

_But devil fruit users were out of the question, because this god drew his power from the sea and her cloaking mists, and he wanted a fair game. Tastier that way. No, he wouldn't take a devil fruit user, especially not one that tasted of rubber._

_(Guys, Usopp tried again. Really, could they all show a little more alarm here?)_

_So Zoro held back a raging Luffy and volunteered himself again, and then Sanji said he was definitely going to get lost and fall on his face so stop trying to act cool, and then the god said, very well._

_The two of you, together._

_It would be entertaining, he thought._

_And then the god waved a hand and Zoro and Sanji disappeared into the fog. There was screaming and yelling for a while, but then the god said quiet and everyone was quiet._

_What happened in between that and the moment Zoro and Sanji came back, dropped onto the deck, unconscious but in one piece—that you already know. They passed, of course._

_Satisfactory, the god conceded bitterly._

_In the end, the god sent us on our way. No one asked any questions; it's as if they were already forgetting the encounter, even as the god waved us a resentful goodbye. A god's magic can do that._

_He let me keep my memories, though I suspect it's because he forgot about me. Gods get careless sometimes. Maybe it's old age. Or maybe they don't come across many Klabautermann, or maybe they don't care. I'm not offended._

_He was definitely disappointed to see us go. I don't think he comes across many ships made of Adam wood._

_I know Zoro and Sanji remember everything, even if they don't acknowledge it, at least not in the way normal people do. They are even more vicious towards each other now, even louder and meaner, because they do know better despite what everyone thinks. They know how much further they can still push. They hit harder because they know the other won't break, know that they have both endured so much more. It would be an insult to hold back. That's the kind of language they speak._

_And it was good that we came across the god, because after that test, they were better prepared for what awaited them at Thriller Bark. You'll see._

_Just remember you shouldn't worry about them too much. There are not many monsters out there scarier than the ones on my crew._

.

.

Standing before Kuma, Zoro is in his place and Sanji understands it as a promise. Zoro will do this because he's given his word, and because he is his own reckless self.

Standing before Kuma, Sanji offers his own life and Zoro understands it as gratitude. Sanji will always pay you back in full, on top of the everything he already gives unasked.

Zoro says, it's my turn to sacrifice.

Sanji says, I promise you too.

So, standing before Kuma, they come to an agreement. Zoro promises to survive, and Sanji will pay him back for every drop of blood he loses.

Zoro slams the hilt of Wadou into Sanji's side. Sanji grips Zoro's arm hard enough to leave bruises.

And they both mean, I understand.

.

.

* * *

I tried with the Zoro/Sanji. I really, really tried.

The old man that the crew encounters here is the same "mysterious entity" that Lola and her crew encounter. I say it is a god/god-like because I imagine a fearful cult of worship surrounding it-people would make offerings to appease it, kind of like praying for safe passage through the fog. That sort of thing.

I am also going on the assumption that Zoro and Sanji don't know the details of each other's pasts, since no one else was around when Zoro joined Luffy, and Zoro was effectively passed out for the majority of the Baratie arc. Good times!


End file.
